


The Wilder Shores

by levendis



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bondage, Cheating, F/M, Masochism, Sadism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-08
Updated: 2014-11-08
Packaged: 2018-02-24 15:10:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2585999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stepping up and letting go: dom!Clara, sub!Twelve, and faking it til you make it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wilder Shores

The Doctor gets his hand stuck in a machine. Or, rather, the Doctor sticks his hand into a machine, and then acts surprised when it doesn’t turn out well.   
  
"Are you serious?" Clara whispers, in the most forceful stage-whisper she can manage. "Did you leave your brain behind in the TARDIS?"  
  
"There’s something in there," he whispers back. He jams his injured hand into one pocket and pulls the screwdriver out of the other, whirring it around vaguely. "Some kind of - object. Shiny. Not supposed to be there. I thought I’d be fast enough to grab it before the, whatever these are -" gesturing with the screwdriver, which dutifully produces a confused, shrugging sort of tone - "finished doing whatever it is they do."  
  
"Reflexes not what they used to be, huh."  
  
His eyes focus on something over her shoulder. “We can discuss my physical decrepitude later. For now - _run_.”  
  
  
Seven hours later the day has been saved and they’re back in her flat, drinking a well-earned cup of tea. Or, she’s drinking tea, and he’s flicking rapidly through her Netflix queue. Sitting at opposite ends of the couch, her contentedly curled up around a throw pillow, him perched awkwardly on the edge, shins jammed up against her coffee table. It’s almost like they’re normal people having a normal night in.   
  
"Something funny, maybe? Buster Keaton, you like him."  
  
"Good old Buster. Did I ever tell you about the time we…"  
  
He’s talking but she’s not really listening. She knows by now the difference between an actual conversation and white noise, knows when he expects her to pay attention. She’s just letting it wash over her. Watching him go, like a wind-up toy.  
  
His hand’s still in his pocket. _Oh_ , she thinks. _Whoops._ Really, she should have noticed that before. To her credit, there had been an awful lot going on, and she was exhausted. But still. She leans over, slowly, eyes on his face to make sure he’s still distracted, and gingerly curls her fingers around his wrist. He flinches, and hisses, and then keeps talking, despite the fact he’s now trying to fold himself so small he might potentially slip in between the cushions undetected.  
  
"You’re hurt," she interrupts. There’s a mix of protectiveness and exasperation in her voice, neither of which she tries to hide. He’s so dumb sometimes. Like a little boy pretending the fall from the tree had been on purpose, and he’s fine, he swears.   
  
"It’s nothing."  
  
"It’s something."  
  
"It’s _nothing_. Time Lords heal faster than you humans. You’re always falling apart. All that evolution and scientific progress, you think you’d have figured out how to keep from dissolving at the slightest provocation.”  
  
He’s still babbling about superior physiology and the deplorable state of medical care in 21st century Earth and the sentient goo of the Elbanav system (who bounce on impact with hard surfaces) as she leads him to her kitchen, for a pack of frozen peas, and to her bathroom, for bandages and a washcloth, and back out to her living room, for the couch, where she guides him into some semblance of normal sitting posture with a pointed look and a side-shouldered nudge. He doesn’t stop talking, mouth open and brain unspooling, nothing with any connection to the way he can’t meet her eyes.  
  
And she lets him, because it’s something he needs to do.   
  
His right hand is a strange bird, fluttering and grasping, reaching for all the words between the words that manage to find their way out of his head. His left hand is clenched in a fist.   
  
"I was shot once, did you know, and I would have been completely fine if it weren’t for the catastrophic ineptitude of…"  
  
"Hand out," she says. "C’mon. Let me see."   
  
He obliges, slowly. He’s talking about a race of rabbit people who break their own bones as a coming-of-age ritual. She’s unpeeling his fingers from his palm, one at a time. She’s ignoring how much work he is putting into not running away. Flesh-eating bacteria, artificial planets made from medical surplus, the Great Trash Whirlpool (numbers 1 through 19). She wipes the dirt off, not bothering to be gentle where the cuts have started to scab over. Nothing seems bad enough to need stitches, and nothing appears to be broken, but it’s still a bit of a mess. She wraps a length of bandage around the worst of it in a close approximation of what they’d taught her at the first-aid certification course. It’ll do.  
  
For reasons she isn’t entirely sure of, she threads her fingers through his now mummied-up ones, and squeezes. His voice cracks almost imperceptibly. He’s not even talking about anything anymore, just listing off notable sight-seeing locations.   
  
"Can’t do much for the bruises," she says, "but at least now you shouldn’t get gangrene and die."  
  
The monologue cuts off abruptly. He’s staring at their hands. “Thank you, Nurse.”   
  
"Don’t mention it. Seriously, don’t - talk about it."  
  
And that’s enough, really, of that, so she pulls away and hands him the frozen peas, grabs the remote from the table, and puts on _The Navigator_.   
  
"I eat these?"  
  
"It’s an ice-pack. You wear those. Now shut up."  
  
And he does, and so they watch the movie, Buster Keaton flinging himself over and over into the abyss.  
  
  
  
  
———————————————————————————-  
  
The Doctor gets his foot stuck in his mouth. Or, rather, the Doctor bends over backwards to form an Ouroboros of utter jerk, and then acts surprised when it doesn’t go over well.  
  
They’re fighting, this is a fight. She thinks maybe she might actually kill him.  
  
"Just - get over yourself, seriously," she spits out. "The holier-than-thou act’s wearing a little thin."  
  
He gestures to her, like, no, see, you’re talking about yourself. The bastard’s even got the temerity to try a smile, oh, aren’t we so alike and isn’t that so funny, ha ha ha?  
  
So she puts both hands to his chest and pushes him, hard as she can. He goes flying. There’s a box of widgets that he takes with him, while he stumbles back flailing, clocks and levers and partially-dismantled Furbys and floppy disks and empty yoghurt containers, flipped up into the air and cascading down on him as he finally succumbs to gravity halfway up the staircase.   
  
"Clara - !" He scrambles away from her, up the steps.  
  
"How dare you?" she grinds out, teeth clenched. A Furby warbles quietly in the distance. She grabs him by the lapels and drags him up, finding some hidden reserve of strength because he’s heavier than he looks, and just as ungainly as he looks, and possibly he slightly helps her out, rising willingly in her grasp. He looks baffled and disapproving, so she shoves him again, this time against a bookshelf. Her hands don’t leave him. She’s too angry to talk, too angry to think. She wants to kick him in the shins, she wants to break the TARDIS windows in with a mallet, she wants to scream until his ears bleed, she wants to pick up that stupid twee schoolbell off its Martha Stewart tablescape perch and bash him about the stupid twee head with it. It would ring, for comedic effect. Get it, see, because he’s a joke. And fuck it, fuck him, fuck this whole stupid situation. And then -   
  
Then the atmosphere changes. Maybe she’s just loopy from adrenaline and anger. It’s been known to happen. He’s staring at her with a mixture of emotions she couldn’t begin to interpret. Maybe she’s staring at him too.   
  
"Clara," he says again, but this time it’s aching and soft, this time it’s a confession, or an invitation.  
  
So she yanks him down, his knees buckling between her legs, and kisses him. Hard. The angle is wrong and their teeth click together, his arms take too long to unlock from their defensive posture, she briefly manages to get the tip of her nose inside his nose. It’s awful. She pulls back, wipes her mouth, and kisses him again.  
  
His hands are still fluttering around, thumbs finding the soft spot beneath her ears then drifting off again, fingers tangling in her hair then untangling, and maybe he’s scared and uncertain but mostly he’s annoying so she grabs his wrists and pulls his arms over his head, holds them there, tight enough to bruise. She wants it to bruise. He’s slipping, boots skidding out, but she’s not done with him, she holds him there, her hips pressed hard into him like he’s a pinball machine and she’s tilting him, playing to win.   
  
When she is done, she steps away and lets him collapse gracelessly to the floor. He makes a noise, it might be words.  
  
"That was something that happened," she says, vaguely. "I have to go teach a class now. See you when I see you." And she runs, headlong out the doors and into Coal Hill and she doesn’t look back.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
———————————————————————————-  
  
The third time she kisses him, it’s apropos of nothing much. He’s sitting on her bed, getting his space-dirt all over her freshly laundered sheets. She’s wondering, wondering why any of this is a thing for her, how this is her life. Maybe he says something about her hair, and why does she change it, and why is she so invested in looking different all the time when she could be like him, simple and easily identified. Maybe he looks attractive in an unusually regular way, instead of the standard Angry Super Stick Insect Man way that leads to confusion about her fundamental sexual preferences. Maybe whatever. But she kisses him. Gently at first, and when he doesn’t quite respond - not in the way she’d like - with teeth, biting at his lower lip, and a hand on his hip, pressed hard against bone. And he melts, mouth opening. And she’s wondering.  
  
She maneuvers him across the bed, straddles him. Unknots the scarf from around her neck, lays it pointedly by his side. Like, look at this, connect the dots, with your massive brain. And she moves slow, so slow, with all the space in the world for him to stop her; she picks his dead-fish hands up, thumbs rubbing the hollow of his palms, and brings them up above his head, and lays them there. Like here is me, and here is you, and here is me asking you, and here is your chance to run.  
  
But he doesn’t run, and so she ties the scarf around his wrists, and then ties the scarf to the headboard. He’s fully-dressed, boots and all, but at this point she’s given up the sheets as a lost cause. So what about the space dirt, whatever… _time particles_ , he might be shedding everywhere. So what.   
  
And he pulls at the, if she does say so herself, sailor-like knotwork, not hard enough to break free (which she’s fairly sure he could, if he wanted), but hard enough to dig into his skin, and that’s the thing that makes his hips rock up against hers, and that’s where she learns that Time Lords do in fact have something that, at least from a relative distance, very closely resembles an erection.   
  
"Oh, Clara," he gets out, and then chokes back whatever else he was going to say. No matter. They are them and this is now, and she reaches down and unbuckles his belt, unbuttons and unzips his trousers, dips a finger into the waistband of his charmingly functional pants, and pulls down. Does the same to herself, with a little less relish.  Fumbles in the drawer of the bedside table. And, without looking (because what if it’s weird and what if everything is ruined by her inability to mentally process alien dick, that would be terrible), she tears the package open with her teeth, executes a blind-faith condom deposit; and she guides him into her and she sinks down and it is, all things considered, a fairly nice alien dick. Not that she has much to compare to. Alien-wise, that is.   
  
And she rides him, and the thoughts fall out of her head, and then there’s nothing else in the universe aside from this. One hand keeping them together, wingman thumb on her clit, the other scrabbling up under his shirt, the cool skin, double-time heartbeat, her fingernails scraping down hard enough to leave marks. Her eyes on his face falling open, and on his fingers flexing above him, and he’s all knuckles, hipbones, elbows, knees twitching and tangling in the bedspread.   
  
Time passes, things happen. Or it doesn’t, and they don’t. But this is them and here is now and at some point she makes a noise that could be misconstrued as a moan, and at some point she stills, and at some point she comes. And those moments are chronologically relative, probably. And at some point that is likely after those points, he is making a noise that is human/inhuman/animal, and he is strained so hard against the restraints she’d be worried for the structural integrity of her bedframe if she was paying any sort of attention, and he’s shaking and coming and then he’s just a sort of boneless puddle on her Egyptian-cotton, high-thread-count sheets. Which he will wash, because this is his fault.  
  
She slides off of him and manages to extricate his wrists from her, yes, accomplished knots, then flops down next to him.  
  
"So that’s one way to get you to shut up," she says, and boops his nose. He grins, in a guarded sort of way. She heaves herself off the bed and lets the post-orgasm glow glide her through the clean-up routine. She asks if he wants a shower - he waves his hands at her, no, like how could she think he’d want to partake in her comedically primitive cleanliness rituals. Gosh, she probably uses _water_.   
  
She gives him one last look, memorizing the sight of him mussed and disarrayed, hair going everywhere, undone and debauched and noodly. In her bed, from what she did.   
  
By the time she emerges from the shower, barefoot and dripping and with a strategically sexy towel, he’s gone. She supposes she didn’t expect anything else.   
  
  
———————————————————————————-  
  
  
(She’s dreaming about the forest. Earth overrun by itself, nature encroaching, the dark and mysterious woods. She is dreaming about something chasing her. She’s running, stumbling over the underbrush, running faster than she ever has, from the thing she cannot see but knows is getting closer, closer - )  
  
  
  
———————————————————————————-  
  
  
The TARDIS is in her bedroom again. The doors stay closed until she opens them; the Doctor lets her come to him. Her own time, her own pace. He’s up with the books, in the shadows, doing whatever it is he does when he’s alone.   
  
She keeps her distance, no sudden movements, making her way slowly up a staircase and around the second level. Keeping an eye on him, as he pretends to be deeply interested in a chalkboard. “Do you want this?”   
  
"Sorry?" He doesn’t meet her eyes. Fiddling with the chalk again, rolling it around in his fingers. She’s struck again by how different his nervous energy is now, from how he used to be, like it’s all just been compressed down into the smallest of gestures. He would have been running in circles, before, dancing and joking, all charmed fluster and fake confusion. Now it’s just the line of his back, straight and tense, shoulders tightening.   
  
"Do you," she says, brushing by him - fingertips dragging lightly over his jacket collar - keeps going without looking back. "Want." She sits in his armchair, drops her overnight bag to the side, scoots in, feet not quite touching the floor, the leather cool and sticking slightly to the bare skin on her legs. " _This_.”   
  
He puts the chalk on a shelf and it rolls off, clattering somewhere down below. He doesn’t meet her eyes. “You know I’m no good at the talking about feelings thing.”  
  
"Get over it," she says. "You’re a Time Lord. You save planets and defeat evil as a hobby. You can answer a simple question."  
  
"Fine." He rolls his eyes, rolls his shoulders, cracks his knuckles, bounces on his heels. "Yes. Fine. All right. Clara. Claraclara." He puts a hand, as if for balance, on the railing. "I want you." Hoarse and low and mumbled just enough that if she hadn’t been watching his lips move she might have been able to convince herself she’d misheard.  
  
"I know. That wasn’t the question. Pay attention." She settles deeper into the chair, crosses her legs, does her best to look bored.  
  
He sighs. “Help me out here. Give me a clue. Is it bigger than a breadbox?”   
  
To be fair, she doesn’t really want to talk about this either. She’s not ashamed, not as such, but it does seem a little - silly, she supposes. Or a bit banal, a bit forced: _Hello, my name is Clara Oswald, and here is a five-paragraph essay on my sexual intentions._ Just, it makes her a little self-conscious, is all. The strangeness of this, like she’s outside her body, watching herself play a role and doing it relatively poorly.  
  
Or maybe she’ll fuck him but saying she wants to fuck him is just stepping a little too far past the line. Whichever, whatever. She reaches down to her bag and pulls out a pair of tasteful, reasonably expensive black leather cuffs. The clink of the metal hardware rings out clear across a ship that, for once, doesn’t have much to say for herself. She raises an eyebrow.   
  
"Oh," he says. "That."  
  
"Because I don’t want you to do this just because you like me and want to make me happy. I need to know that you - that you want this. And, and all it implies." That last word dragged out in what she hopes is an alluring way but possibly just sounds awkward.  
  
"Are you asking for my consent, Miss Clara?" He loosens up a bit at that, because now he’s back on somewhat stable ground. The smug condescension doesn’t land quite as well as it normally does, but she figures he needs a lifeline.   
  
And besides, there’s time, there’s plenty of time to burn that smugness right out of him. “Basically? Yes.”   
  
He looks like a man about to jump into a pit with no certainty as to what lay at the bottom. She recognizes the expression because she has, in fact, watched him jump into a mystery hole, on more than one occasion. He’s standing on the edge and considering, considering. “You have it,” he says.   
  
So. Things unfold. She’d wondered if maybe they wouldn’t. The cuffs dropped casually back into her bag, she gets up, with a quick once-over to make sure her outfit is, in fact, pitched just right to pull this off. It is, it always is, she’s good. “C’mere.”  
  
He crab-walks over. He has, possibly, forgotten how his legs work. It happens.   
  
She steps in close and runs her fingers lightly down his chest, stomach, fingernails catching on his belt buckle and hanging there. His hands come up automatically to her sides, but she bats them away. “Ah, no, hands to yourself, please.” He frowns, but acquiesces. She pulls his coat off, tosses it towards the console, red lining flashing. Shirt next. Button by button, and oh, she’s going as slow as she can manage, because something in him is buzzing, and is cresting at every touch, and she wants him begging by the time she’s done. Shirt off, tossed in the same general direction as the coat.  
  
He’s much less imposing without all the armor. More - she hates to say it, even internally, but more human. If she squints and wills herself to forget what he is, he just looks like a scrawny middle-aged man in a Primark t-shirt. He shrinks back, like he knows what she’s thinking, like he’s wondering if he’s been found wanting.   
  
And in order to pour salt into his wounded ego, she gives him an up-down look, shrugs as if to say _you’ll do I suppose_ , and walks away, down to the console. Waits. Regulates her breathing. Looks up at him, and crooks a finger.  
  
He comes.  
  
This is happening, and this is new and foreign, despite the many helpful pamphlets given to her by the charming if over-familiar woman at the sex toy shop, upon the request for basic information on how to put men into compromising situations. But she can do this, of course she can do this, she’s good.   
  
"On your knees," she says, trying out a slightly more dramatic Bossy-with-a-capital-B voice. It’s terribly cheesy. She winces.   
  
Regardless, after a perfunctory eyebrow-raise, he lowers himself neatly to his knees. Stares at her, expectantly.   
  
"Don’t move," she says. "Not an _inch_ ”.  
  
He doesn’t. He’s barely breathing, or not breathing at all: he’s showing off, probably. Like, you know. ‘Ooooh look at me, and my respiratory bypass. No one follows directions as good as me, the Doctor.’ Her resolve to break him up into his component parts is suddenly strengthened.   
  
"Hands behind your back." She’s getting into the groove, she’s got this. She’s totally got this.  
  
"You said not to move, I’m confused, is this getting paradoxical or are you just flip-flopping because that’s not-"  
  
Quick enough she barely realizes she’s doing it, she lunges forward and grabs him by the side of his head, fingers threading through his desperately-in-need-of-a-cut hair and pulling, hard. “Shut up,” she says, conversationally. He does.   
  
She twists her fingers and watches the breath fall out of him, and then come shuddering back. She watches him swallow hard against whatever it is that’s caught in his throat. His eyes are watering.  
  
"I’m so tired of listening to you. Whatever you think you need to say, keep it to yourself, I don’t want to hear it. Say another word, just one more word, and I’ll stop. Do you understand."  
  
He nods, and she releases her grip. Moves her hand to gently cup his cheek, thumb brushing lightly against his lips, and here’s where he actually, finally, really, hearts-to-heart _looks_ at her, eyes wide, face as open and as young as she’s ever seen it. He’s vulnerable and he’s hers and she could do anything, anything to him right now.   
  
She realizes suddenly that she has no idea what to do. She knows the way he’s looking up at her is making something pool low in her belly, 90% arousal and 10% a feeling she doesn’t want to learn the word for. She knows there’s a live wire running through him and pulling him taut and she holds the end of it. She knows he’s hers.  
  
He is hers to break. She just can’t think of how to start.  
  
So, she doesn’t. There’s marking to be done, and lesson plans to sort out, and the work won’t finish itself.   
  
  
Assignment books retrieved and tucked under her arm, she drags a chair beside him. She considers the tendons in his neck, the narrow white of his back. The blank page, curse of writers everywhere. A challenge and an invitation and the threat of failure. She sits down, purses her lips, taps a beat out against the books in her lap. “‘Sontaran’,” she says, feeling self-conscious again. Because if anything can destroy her arousal right now, it’s Strax. Which, to be fair, is the point.   
  
He turns his head around enough for his raised eyebrow to be visible. At least he’s managed to keep the question nonverbal.   
  
"If you want it to stop. I mean really stop. All of it. If you need out, or you’re uncomfortable, or even - mildly uncertain. ‘Sontaran’. Is, uh. The magic word. Yeah?"  
  
He nods.  
  
"Right. Well. Hope you didn’t have any plans, because this is going to take hours." She settles back in the chair and, very deliberately, presses the heels of her shoes to his back, digging in until he gets the idea and lets himself be pushed over, head bowed down by his knees. "Kids these days, all the Twittering and texting and hashtagging, you’d think they’d have a better grasp on how to communicate their ideas." One slow scrape of the edge of a heel over his shoulder blades, then she crosses her legs nonchalantly on top of him and flips open the first copybook.  
  
Going by her watch, which who knows anymore, it takes an hour and twenty minutes. After the first five minutes his breathing evens out. After the first ten her pulse has slowed to normal. Half-hour in, she is legitimately just working. An hour, he’s trembling. She stops working. Muscle strain, or he’s getting antsy. But he says nothing, and his hands stay clasped behind his back, and she is whiteknuckling the arms of the chair. Hour-fifteen, his breathing de-evens, and she wishes she knew why any of this was affecting her, nothing is happening, this is just a situation. And she’s soaking wet. Because, what. Because she’s doing this to him? Because he’s struggling? Because she’s apparently the sort of person who likes watching this sort of thing. Because he’s apparently the sort of person who likes being made to - crumble. Whatever any of that means.  
  
To think she’d half-believed she’d known what she was doing. She stands up. “Okay. Okay? You can talk now, if you want. And,” she sticks an arm down at him, “you can get up. I, um. It’s over.” Clara Oswald, seductive dominatrix, classiest thing around, check her out.  
  
But he takes her hand and kind of sways up around her, and now he’s looking down at her again, but there’s a moment - something in his face that makes her want to tuck him into bed - something sweet and grateful and kind, and fleeting, of course. She smiles and tries not to mix it up with sad.   
  
He grabs his coat off the floor with an odd sort of straight-legged move - like a toy soldier with no proper joints - dusts it off, tries to put it on without moving his shoulders. His face shifts back, in that weird way it has, into angry and owlish and hard as nails. He closes himself off. He’s the Doctor. He flips the lever. _This never happened_ , he doesn’t say.  
  
What he does say is: “Til next week, then,” flat and too loud.  
  
"We’ll see," she says, with more confidence than she feels. She does not point out that he’d neglected to put his shirt back on, and that the outfit doesn’t really work without it. She walks out with a reasonable facsimile of a swagger. The TARDIS does not linger.   
  
In the shower, hot water beating down, she allows something inside her to snap in half. One hand braced against the wall, the other between her legs, the most efficient orgasm she’s had in months. It’s not that she wants to cry, it’s just - it’s a headache, that’s all.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
———————————————————————————-  
  
She calls Danny, fingers crossed he doesn’t pick up. It hits voicemail. She takes a deep breath, and smiles widely, and says “Heeeyyy, I know I’ve been a bit of a mess. You don’t deserve that. I’m sorry. I’m really, I just - I want to see you. Come over. Please.” She pauses. “I love you.”  
  
Two hours of half-heartedly grading papers, watching nature documentaries out of the corner of her eye. Two hours wondering if she’d said something wrong, played it wrong, if she should have been more apologetic or less, if she’d come off as glib. Maybe she should give up, embrace a night alone, change into unflattering sweatpants and talk to some ice cream about it.   
  
But the doorbell rings, and he’s there, wearing a baby-blue sweater that does things to his chest and shoulders that should be illegal, holding a takeaway bag and a six pack of the microbrews she pretends to enjoy, and if he’s not quite smiling then he at least looks understanding.   
  
"Mr. Pink," she says, waving him in with a flourish. "The lady of the house will see you now. May I take your coat?"  
  
"Yeah, not really into roleplay. Especially involving servants, slavery, you know - "  
  
"Oh, oh no. Not like that. I’m so sorry. That was a dumb thing to say - "  
  
He grins. “Relax. I mean, it kind of was.” He slides an arm around her back, squeezes. “I don’t really mind. I just like watching you squirm. But, I’ll be honest. I like _you_. I don’t need to spice things up.” He kisses the top of her head, and she wants to melt into him, wants to wrap herself up in his sweater and not ever come out. “You don’t need to pretend for me, Clara.”   
  
And there it is. “I know.”  
  
"I won’t run away. I won’t get angry. You don’t have to lie."  
  
"I know," she says again. "And I’m not." She pulls his body flush against hers, runs her hands over his back. "This is me being honest." On tip-toes, eyes wide, she kisses him. And he’s warm and he’s comfortable and he’s kissing her as sweetly as she’s ever been kissed, and he’s got a fantastic arse, which he enjoys having squeezed so long as she doesn’t dig her nails in. And he’s gorgeous and he’s human and she wants him, and she wants to want him. And if she could just stay here, forever -   
  
He pulls back suddenly. Rubs at the back of his neck, exhales slowly, looks down at her. Half with that about-to-get-fucked expression, half with a kind of melancholic disappointment. “Maybe we should talk. Before we, uh. Get distracted.”  
  
"Or maybe we should get the distractions out of the way." She holds his gaze, wills him to understand that she’s tired of talking, but it’s not a brush-off, she just needs to communicate in a different sort of way right now. "We’ll talk later, I promise."  
  
  
They don’t. She pretends to fall asleep, and lets him hold her. He’s solid and he’s warm and the hand resting gently on her hip is asking so very little, and she doesn’t want to think about what he’d say if she turned around.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
———————————————————————————-  
  
  
  
The TARDIS is, essentially, as big as she wants to be. A series of identical corridors all leading back to the console room, or a labyrinth, or five acres of immaculately-kept gardens, or a swimming pool, or a zeppelin hangar. Rooms that vanish and contract and evolve, that hide and present themselves according to some obscure desire. Clara hasn’t seen a tenth of what this ship can be. But then, the old girl always did play her cards close to her chest.  
  
And so the emotion she feels is not surprise but a sort of bemused acceptance, when the Doctor leads her through halls and mezzanines and sewers and chapels to the room he wants to show her. This ship has everything they need. Of course this room exists.  
  
"It’s been a while," he says: he’s brusque but nervous. Bashful, even.   
  
"It’s - very bright." Bright, and pale gray, and plastic. Antiseptic in a way that tugs at a half-memory she can’t place, like she’s seen this before, or something very like this.  
  
"Must have escaped the redecoration. Buried too deep, I suppose. You could change it. If it’s too bright for you."  
  
And lined up very neatly on the walls, like set decoration in a cheap TV show, are all the things she couldn’t afford to buy from the sex shop, and quite a few things besides. An overwhelming amount of - things. She traces a fingertip along the sleek line of a whip, held in place by orange and pink zipties.  
  
"How do I change it? Not to mock your choice in decor, but my eyeballs are melting."  
  
After a small, composed hesitation, he takes her hand and places it against the wall. A look like an apology, and a shrug, and then she is, what - merging, into the ship. Something in her head that she doesn’t recognize. A cloud, a seismic shift, a quick rifling through the filing cabinet. Then it’s done. She opens eyes she hadn’t realized she’d closed.   
  
The room is now a study, dark and mahogany. A desk, an armchair, a padlocked chest. Shadows in the corners. It’s warm and it’s welcoming but there’s something, something -   
  
"I made this," she says, or asks.  
  
"We made this. All three of us."  
  
She doesn’t say that she’s not totally into the idea of a threesome with a sentient time capsule, although she wants to. A tarot card, the Hanged Man, hung framed behind the desk. Gas lamps flickering. The Doctor is saying that it was different the last time, he was different, it wasn’t like this, he has no clue what’s here and what happens at this particular angle and do not ever repeat that to anyone, ever.  A St Andrew’s Cross, massive but unassuming. A letter opener centered perfectly on the desk, sharper than it should be.  
  
The room has teeth.   
  
She leans back on the desk, arms folded. “Strip.”   
  
"Pardon?"  
  
"Clothes. Off. Chop chop, we might have all day but that’s no excuse to waste time." She tilts her chin up and waits expectantly, but he’s not moving.  
  
"Why?"   
  
She frowns. No, he wasn’t supposed to say that. It’s not supposed to go like this. “Sorry, what?”  
  
"Why should I listen to a word you have to say? Who are you to tell me what to do? Who _are_ you, Clara Oswald?” His hands are doing that thing again, like sign language, like all the rest of what he means to say lies in the gestures he somehow expects her to be able to translate.  
  
Part of her is aware he’s just trying to get a rise out of her. Part of her is panicking. She hadn’t planned for this. She doesn’t know what to say. So she says, “You know who I am.” Playing for time.  
  
"Do I?"  
  
"More than you think," she says. "And that frightens you. Because it’s so much easier when you can believe we’re just fairy tales, isn’t it. That we don’t age, don’t change, don’t die. But I am not the Impossible Girl, I am not your fantasy. I’m real. This is real. Flesh and blood and you know me better than you know yourself, and don’t you dare pretend that isn’t true."  
  
She keeps going: she’s found her rhythm. “You know who I am and I know who you are. You’re a scared little boy, and a lonely old man. You’re an egomaniac who’s spent centuries making bad decisions. You thought you were different this time, Mr. Minimal, bringing it back to basics, fixing all your mistakes. But you keep messing up in all the same old ways. Nothing’s changed. But you want to, don’t you?”  
  
"You still haven’t given me a reason."  
  
"You want to know who you are. What you are." She pushes off the desk and puts herself as close to him as she can without touching, stands on tip-toes, whispers in his ear: "I’ll show you."  
  
Maybe he’d been expecting her to yell, to threaten or cajole. Maybe he’d hoped that for once it wouldn’t be his choice. He should know by now that it could never be easy. That isn’t what this is about.   
  
"Do as you’re told," she says softly.   
  
So he strips. Stiffly, carefully, everything neatly folded and hung up in a wardrobe she’d swear wasn’t there before. His eyes trained on the floor. The gas lamps dim obligingly.   
  
She spins him around to face the wall, pushes him along towards the cross. His skin is cool and unexpectedly smooth, like he’d only bothered putting wrinkles in the more obvious places, like a doll never meant to be undressed. She remembers that he is, in fact, an alien.   
  
Embarrassingly enough, she can’t reach anywhere near the top of the cross. He waits with what might be patience in anyone else, arms draped over the wooden beams, while she drags the chair over. Hops up with a look on her face she hopes communicates just how much she would not appreciate any comments from the peanut gallery.   
  
Wrists, then ankles. She gives the chains a tug: they’re solid, he’s stuck.   
  
She finds a skeleton key in one of the desk’s drawers, buried beneath fountain pens and paperclips. The padlock on the chest is old, rusted, tumblers balking at the key. A curse and a yank and it’s open, finally, and she’s creaking the lid open. And, again, there’s just so much stuff, and so little she 100% understands the purpose of. What would anyone need a rubber duck for, in this context?  
  
A quick weighing of her options, and she picks the thing her eyes drift to first. The cat o’ nine tails. Because she wants it to hurt, doesn’t she. She wants to push this thing to its logical conclusion.   
  
The whip is well-worn and deceptively soft, heavy in her hands. The handle fits in her palm like it was made for her. She kisses the ridge of his spine, between his shoulders: _Everything is gonna be okay_.  
  
And she hits him. Not much, just a flick of the wrist. Never start with your final sanction. Again, a little more confident. Working up a rhythm. Everything silent but the noise of leather on skin, the occasional grunt on his behalf, the occasional dry-mouthed swallow on hers.   
  
Again, and again, and again. She’s keeping time, she’s a ticking clock, she is a pendulum and this is the center of the universe and everything is falling away. And he’s sinking, pulling hard on the chains. She stops, leans around to see his face. He’s sweating, breathing hard, eyes closed.   
  
"Are you alright?"   
  
He nods.   
  
"Are you sure? You look a bit - knackered."  
  
"Not - Not half as much as I should be. Please. Clara, please." He opens one eye, pale blue and pupils blown, brows at an angle that would make her laugh if they were not in this particular situation. "You’re stronger than that. Don’t hold back. _Please_.”  
  
She steps back, considers. Flexes her shoulders. Winds up, and strikes as hard as she can. The noise he makes is raw and easily translatable. She hits him again. He’s bleeding, he’s shaking, he’s a single sustained wordless cry, flesh and bone, a feral thing. He’s breaking apart.  
  
She’s feeling something slot into place inside her.   
  
At a certain point he collapses entirely, swinging limp from the cross. At a certain point she is stopping herself from hitting him again, from grinding the bootheel in. She files this fact about herself away in an infrequently-visted compartment in her brain. She is taking him down, gently as she can, catching him as he falls in a loose-limbed slump against her. She’s laying him on the floor, because she doesn’t have the energy to drag him an inch let alone to the couch. She’s wrapping him up in a blanket that appeared out of nowhere. She’s holding him, his head in her lap. He’s crying. Maybe she’s crying too.   
  
  
  
———————————————————————————-  
  
(She is running through the forest and she is chasing him. The sun on her back, the dirt beneath her paws. the teeth in her mouth, the scent of blood. He is running and he is running from her, or he is running with her, or he is not running at all but instead waiting for her, arms spread, inviting her in.)  
  
  
———————————————————————————-  
  
The line is silent. She bites her lip. The clock in the kitchen is ticking, ticking, ticking, and how had she never noticed before how loud it was?  
  
After what could be either five seconds or an hour, she finally hears Danny clear his throat. “Say it again,” he says. “Please.” His voice is so small.  
  
"I fucked him," she says. It’s different from how she said it the first time, but she hates repeating herself.  
  
"And you’re telling me this on the phone."  
  
"I couldn’t bear to see your face," she admits, or she says in a tone that implies she is admitting, and those are essentially the same things.   
  
"Do you even know how to have an interaction with someone without - without setting it all up to your benefit? Can’t you ever just _let go_?”   
  
"I am, Danny, pay attention, this is me letting go, this is me accepting the consequences - "  
  
"No, no you’re not. You’re throwing this at me over the phone. You’ve, you’ve weaponized this. Clara. Please. If you care about me, about us, at all. Let me just see you. Let’s do this face to face. Let me in, Clara."  
  
"I do care," she whispers, though he probably doesn’t hear. Louder: "Fine. Come over. I’ll be here. He won’t."  
  
  
In the whatever time it takes for the doorbell to ring, she just stands in the middle of the living room, staring at the wall. One of the picture frames is crooked. Knick-knacks could use a dusting. The clock in the kitchen is ticking, and the people downstairs are watching _Mock the Week_ at an unreasonably loud volume, and she is breathing manually.   
  
The doorbell rings. She unlocks the door. Danny comes in. She relocks the door. She resumes her position in the middle of the living room. This is the sequence of events.   
  
She waits, staring at the wall.  
  
"So," Danny says. "Tell me about it?"  
  
"Do you really want to know?"  
  
"Not like that. Don’t - just. The things around the - thing. Circumstances."  
  
"You want to know circumstances."  
  
"Tell me," he says, keeping a safe distance. "What was going on in your head. Why, you know? Why would - what - what is it you get from him? That you couldn’t come to me for?"  
  
She almost laughs. Because it is funny, it is. It’s goddamn hilarious. “I hurt him.”  
  
"Not really looking to feel bad for him now."  
  
"No, I mean - " She takes a deep breath. She’s not here, and she’s getting less here by the second. "I, I hit him, and I…tie him up. And he likes it. And I like it. And that’s - what I can’t get from you."  
  
"Okay." The gears are grinding almost audibly in his head.  
  
"It’s not okay."  
  
"No, it’s not." He laughs. She laughs. They are laughing: it’s not very funny.   
  
"So."  
  
"Do you love him?"  
  
"On the balance, yes."  
  
"Do you love me?"  
  
The laugh bubbling up inside her again, because he doesn’t get it, everything’s just so simple to him. That’s one of the reasons she likes him. That’s one of the reasons this is so hard. “Yes. Of course. You know I do. You have to believe me.”  
  
"I don’t have to," he says. "But I think I do. I just. I need some time."  
  
"Understandable."  
  
"Can’t make any promises."  
  
"Nope."  
  
They stand there. She’s not sure if this is over, if that’s a good place to end it, if this is the part where he leaves. He’s engaging in a full-body shrug, tensing and untensing like he wishes it was socially acceptable to go smash his face repeatedly into the wall.  
  
And then he sighs, and relaxes, and reaches out to cup her face, stroking her cheek gently; and she’s trying to hold back tears, and put on a convincing smile; and he’s leaving.  
  
But maybe, maybe. Maybe she doesn’t have to choose. Stranger things have happened.  
  
  
———————————————————————————-  
  
The Doctor saves the world again. Or, rather, Clara saves the world, and he takes all the credit. Which is fine, to be honest, she’s alright with that. Mythology is a heavy thing to carry around. He’s willing to bear the burden, and she lets him.  
  
They’re walking back to the TARDIS, through an orchard of white-leaved trees with odd blue fruit. The sun is shining, birds are chirping ominously, it’s beautiful. She’s trying to grab at the fruit as they pass, and missing every time, always a few inches short. She keeps trying.  
  
"You should carry around a step-ladder. Or one of those claw-stick things they advertise on late-night telly." He smirks and snags a fruit from an unnecessarily high branch, tosses it over his shoulder in her general direction. "I can’t promise it’ll be any good but I can tell you it’s not poisonous to humans. Probably."  
  
Time Lords heal quickly, or at least this one does, but she notices: as he stretches up with a flourish, his cuff pulls back, exposing his wrist and the red mark circling it. A bruise, a brand. He has to have kept it on purpose. For her, or for himself in memory of her. She supposes she owes him something.  
  
The fruit, polished on her shirt and offered up to whatever local gods of Idiot Tourists Who Eat Random Things, tastes like a crunchy banana. She regrets somewhat committing to eating it, but the build-up has been too great and besides, she wouldn’t want to be rude, in the event that the trees were sentient. At least it doesn’t taste like it’ll kill her. But she needs to focus, because this needs to happen before they step through the TARDIS doors, because the conversations usually stop when they do. He likes segues and obvious metaphors as much as she does.  
  
So she steels herself. “I talked to Danny.”  
  
"I should hope so. Be an odd sort of relationship without talking. Although I suppose you could do charades, or-"  
  
"No, I mean - about us. This." She gestures vaguely between them.   
  
"Ah."  
  
"He needs time. But. I want to know. If he is - okay - with, you know, this. Are you? With him, I mean. Sharing me with PE."  
  
"I already do," he says. "I always have. It’s part of the deal. People like you, people like me. There’s always some kind of compromise. Better to pick the one that’s less likely to end in disillusionment, death, and a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome." He gives her a smile, the one that’s old and sad and a little self-loathing. He frowns, like his brain’s just caught up with itself and wagged a disapproving finger. "That last part was a joke," he clarifies.  "About Stockholm Syndrome. Far as I know that’s never actually…happened."   
  
She lets that slide. “We’re kind of a mess, huh.”  
  
He doesn’t say anything, but sort of half-shrugs and twiddles his fingers and that means _Yes, duh, have you just noticed this now._  
  
Skipping a little to catch up, she tucks her arm into the crook of his elbow. “Can we watch another movie?”  
  
"No. Not interested." He pauses. "You can watch a movie. I can possibly be in the same general area of you, doing something vastly more interesting and important. Hmm?"  
  
"That works for me." She gives his arm a squeeze.   
  
And in the TARDIS, as she looks around surreptitiously for something that might feasibly be a trash can, for the fruit-thing she no longer feels obliged to pretend to enjoy, she wonders if maybe everything could be okay. Maybe this could work.   
  
She puts the fruit on the console, intending to ask him where all the, you know, normal-people things are, or is there possibly a compost room anywhere, but instead just watches him, focused on coordinates and displays and the precise sequence of knob twirls. Watches him do the going-instead-of-talking thing. When she turns back, it’s gone.   
  
_Thank you_ , she thinks, brushing a hand affectionately over the telepathic interface. It might be her imagination, but the ship warbles back at her, long-suffering but accepting. Maybe everything will be fine. She’s got this, she can do this, she’s good. She’s great.  
  
"Home, then," she says, and he flips the lever.


End file.
